Ottoman Empire
NOTE: This article will be mainly using the Gregorian Calendar for dates instead of the in-lore calendar. The Ottoman Empire (/ˈɒtəmən/; Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿOsmānīye), also historically known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire '''or simply '''Turkey, was a state that controlled much of southeastern Europe, western Asia and northern Africa. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt(modern-day Bilecik Province) by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror. Name The word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I, the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman(also known as the Ottoman dynasty). Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān (عثمان‎). In Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye (دولت عليه عثمانیه‎), (literally "The Supreme Ottoman State") or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti (عثمانلى دولتى‎). In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ("The Ottoman Empire") or Osmanlı Devleti ("The Ottoman State"). The Turkish word for "Ottoman" (Osmanlı) originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" (Türk) was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, and was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period, an educated urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker who was not a member of the military-administrative class would refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk, but rather as a Rūmī (رومى‎), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names "Ottoman Empire" and "Turkey" were often used interchangeably, with "Turkey" being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", and "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character. History Rise to Power As the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman (d. 1323/4), a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River. It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam. This theory, known as the Gaza Thesis, is now highly criticised and no longer generally accepted by historians, but no consensus on the nature of the early Ottoman state has yet emerged to replace it. In the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osman's son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326, and made it the new capital of the Ottoman state. This conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetiansin 1387. The Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, widely regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages, failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottoman Turks. With the extension of Turkish dominion into the Balkans, the strategic conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. However the city's strategic position on the Bosphorus Strait and defensive military features made it difficult to conquer. The empire had managed to control nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but in 1402 the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when the Turco-Mongol leader Timur, founder of the Timurid Empire, invaded Anatolia from the east. In the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Timur defeated the Ottoman forces and took Sultan Bayezid I as a prisoner, throwing the empire into disorder. The ensuing civil war lasted from 1402 to 1413 as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when Mehmed I emerged as the sultan and restored Ottoman power, bringing an end to the Interregnum, also known as the Fetret Devri. Part of the Ottoman territories in the Balkans (such as Thessaloniki, Macedonia and Kosovo) were temporarily lost after 1402 but were later recovered by Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s. On 10 November 1444, Murad II defeated the Hungarian, Polish, and Wallachian armies under Władysław III of Poland (also King of Hungary) and John Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna, the final battle of the Crusade of Varna, although Albanians under Skanderbeg continued to resist. Four years later, John Hunyadi prepared another army (of Hungarian and Wallachian forces) to attack the Turks but was again defeated by Murad II at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. Expansionism The son of Murad II, Mehmed the Conqueror, reorganized the state and the military, and conquered Constantinople on 29 May 1453. Mehmed allowed the Orthodox Church to maintain its autonomy and land in exchange for accepting Ottoman authority. Because of bad relations between the states of western Europe and the later Byzantine Empire, the majority of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule as preferable to Venetian rule. Albanian resistance was a major obstacle to Ottoman expansion on the Italian peninsula. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire entered a period of expansion. The Empire prospered under the rule of a line of committed and effective Sultans. It also flourished economically due to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia. Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded the Empire's eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Persia, in the Battle of Chaldiran. Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt, and created a naval presence on the Red Sea. After this Ottoman expansion, a competition started between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire to become the dominant power in the region. Expansion into the Valley The Ottoman military branch in the Balkans, under the control of 'The Envoys', began a military conquest into the Valley, beginning to vassal and annex territories surrounding the Valley. The Envoys used diplomacy and force to vassal the territories, and would create artificial states, kingdoms and presidencies which answered to the Ottoman Sultan. Meeting King William The Ottoman Empire's expeditionary force into the valley, headed by their envoys, entered the Valley and went to Galezar. This caught the attention of King William, and so he met up with Hazim Abdul Shazan, a Turkish commander of the Ottoman Empire. Commander Hazim talked to the king, asking for his permission to be their allies, William accepted their offer and they went to a bar nearby the castle to drink. However, after the king was drunk he was captured by the Turkish soldiers and was sent to jail on his own castle. However, the guards in the castle stopped the Turkish soldiers thus there would be a battle between the Turkish soldiers and the Galezarian soldiers. The Galezarean War The Ottoman Empire launched an attacked on Galezar. This forced the 3 species, humans, elves and orcs to unite temporarily and defeat the invaders. The Knights Helliah holy knights and and the Galezarian army defended the castle and the village. As the attack on the Village went on, Comedy, a mask called to Delvin Lionheart, a holy knight. Delvin was then corrupted by the mask. Civilians such as Faith, Aria and Ny Rem worked together and banded up. These three people went to the Merc Guild's headquarters to ask for help to defeat the turkish invaders. Meanwhile the corrupted Delvin traversed the path of the turkish soldiers. Battle of Constantinople During the Ottoman conquest, generals in the Ottoman Expeditionary Force were withdrawn from the frontlines to protect and guard Constantinople. Seeing this, Delvin Lionheart went to Constantinople, with the help of Comedy, battled the Ottomans, resulting in an Ottoman Surrender. The Ottomans withdrew from Galezar, and would soon call for a peace treaty. Government The state organisation of the Ottoman Empire was a system with two main dimensions, the military administration and the civil administration. The Sultan was the highest position in the system. The civil system was based on local administrative units based on the region's characteristics. The state had control over the clergy. Certain pre-Islamic Turkish traditions that had survived the adoption of administrative and legal practices from Islamic Iran remained important in Ottoman administrative circles. According to Ottoman understanding, the state's primary responsibility was to defend and extend the land of the Muslims and to ensure security and harmony within its borders in the overarching context of orthodox Islamic practice and dynastic sovereignty. The Ottoman Empire, or as a dynastic institution, the House of Osman, was unprecedented and unequaled in the Islamic world for its size and duration. In Europe, only the House of Habsburg had a similarly unbroken line of sovereigns (kings/emperors) from the same family who ruled for so long, and during the same period, between the late 13th and early 20th centuries. The Ottoman dynasty was Turkish in origin. On eleven occasions, the sultan was deposed (replaced by another sultan of the Ottoman dynasty, who were either the former sultan's brother, son or nephew) because he was perceived by his enemies as a threat to the state. There were only two attempts in Ottoman history to unseat the ruling Ottoman dynasty, both failures, which suggests a political system that for an extended period was able to manage its revolutions without unnecessary instability. As such, the last Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI (r. 1918–1922) was a direct patrilineal (male-line) descendant of the first Ottoman sultan Osman I (d. 1323/4), which was unparallelled in both Europe (e.g. the male line of the House of Habsburg became extinct in 1740) and in the Islamic world. The primary purpose of the Imperial Harem was to ensure the birth of male heirs to the Ottoman throne and secure the continuation of the direct patrilineal (male-line) descendance of the Ottoman sultans. Trivia * The empire also temporarily gained authority over distant overseas lands through declarations of allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan and Caliph, such as the declaration by the Sultan of Aceh in 1565, or through temporary acquisitions of islands such as Lanzarote in the Atlantic Ocean in 1585, Turkish Navy Official Website: "Atlantik'te Türk Denizciliği" * Following the Galazerian victory over the Ottomans, sources believe that the Galazereans believed that the Ottomans capitulated.